And, oh, how proud Brunie felt when she had them all nestling up to her like that! And, oh, how happy she was! Surely no bear ever had such beautiful cubs as hers! And so well had she chosen her home that no one—not even a hunter—ever found the mother bear and her little ones.
Her naturally affectionate nature glowed with love, and not once did she leave her children until the spring had fairly set in, and she began to think it was time to set about finding a little food for herself.
It was, however, very scarce. There were no nice berries or corn, and very little honey left. But she found some winter vegetables and several kinds of roots, nuts, snails, small limbs of aspen trees, and plenty of acorns; so that she was able to make a good meal, and then lumber heavily back to her cave.
It was April now, and the other mother-bears began to make their appearance with their various families, and the male bears, too, began to wake up and come out.
Once having got over their long winter sleep, bears begin to be sociable again, and take an interest in their fellow-creatures.
The mother-bears were particularly busy, for they had to teach and educate their little ones, and there is no quainter sight on the earth than a heavy, lumbering, brown mother-bear followed by her funny little woolly cubs.
Brunie commenced to take her children now for daily walks, showed them the most likely places to find dainty bits of food, taught them to climb and dig, and, as they grew older, to swim; and, by way of amusement when resting occasionally, told them about their many relations who existed in all parts of the world.
She told them about their various cousins: the Black Bear, the Syrian bear, the Grizzly bear of America the Thibetan sun bear, the Polar bear of the Arctic regions, the Aswail hear of India, the Bruany bear (also of India), the Sloth bear, the White bear, and the Brown bears who lived in Asia.
The bear family was so varied, and so enormously large, Brunie explained to them, that she did not even know one-quarter of her own brown bears who lived in Northern Europe.
She told them, too—for she was a very intelligent mother-bear—that in whatever country bears lived they were peculiarly adapted to it. The Polar bear, for instance, had nice thick fur all over the bottoms of his feet; this protected him from the intense cold of the ice, and also prevented him from slipping. Then the bears who lived in hot countries did not have such thick coats as those who lived where it was cold.